Water radical cations, the crucial intermediates in many aqueous reactions and biochemical processes, are difficult to be experimentally investigated due to its short lifetime and low abundance. Herein, a homemade device based on energy-tunable discharge was employed to deposit suitable amounts of energy to atmospheric pressure pure water vapor for abundant production of water radical cations, which were stabilized as (H 2 O) n +• (n=2-5) with the maximal abundance (≥ 8.3×10 6 cps) for (H 2 O) 2 +• as characterized by mass spectrometry (MS).The abundance of water radical cations was optimized by adjusting the experimental parameters such as discharge voltage (2.5 kV), temperature of the MS inlet (140 o C), carrier gas flow (20 mL/min) and the distance between the discharge tip and the MS inlet (12 mm). The ambient formation of water radical cations was further confirmed by the high reactivity of the as-prepared water radical cations, which instantly reacted with benzene, ethyl acetate and dimethyl disulfide, showing rich chemistry with the ionic and radical characters. Moreover, the computations confirm that the O-O single-electron bound dimer (B) as well as the hydronium hydroxyl radical complex (A) accounts for the unusual chemistry of the water radical cations, providing a facile approach to access the high reactivity of water radical cations under the ambient condition.

A novel strategy to trace the origins of commercial pharmaceutical products has been developed based on the direct chemical profiling of the pharmaceutical products by surface desorption atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (DAPCI-MS). Besides the unambiguous identification of active drug components, various compounds present in the matrixes are simultaneously detected without sample pretreatment, providing valuable information for drug quality control and origin differentiation. Four sources of commercial amoxicillin products made by different manufacturers have been successfully differentiated. This strategy has been extended to secerning six sources of Liuwei Dihuang Teapills, which are herbal medicine preparations with extremely complex matrixes. The photolysis status of chemical drug products and the inferior natural herd medicine products prepared with different processes (e.g., extra heating) were also screened using the method reported here. The limit of detection achieved in the MS/MS experiments was estimated to be 1 ng/g for amoxicillin inside the capsule product. Our experimental data demonstrate that DAPCI-MS is a useful tool for rapid pharmaceutical analysis, showing promising perspectives for tracking the entire pharmaceutical supply chain to prevent counterfeit intrusions.

Two Keggin-type U(vi)-containing tungstophosphates with sandwich structure were synthesized and characterized. Compound 1 presents excellent catalytic activity towards the condensation cyclization of sulfonyl hydrazines with 1,3-diketones to synthesize sulfonyl pyrazoles.

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Determination of uranium isotopic ratio (235 U/ 238 U) using extractive electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry

In the course of this study, desorption atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (DAPCI-MS) was applied to readily acquire the mass spectral fingerprints of camphor wood and other wood samples under ambient conditions. Characteristic natural analytes, such as camphor and geraniol, were successfully detected in their protonated form and then identified by tandem mass spectrometry (MS(n)). Further principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) of the mass spectrometric results allow a confident discrimination of camphor wood products from inferior/fake ones. These experimental findings demonstrate that DAPCI-MS is a valuable tool for differential analysis of untreated camphor wood products with sufficient sensitivity and high throughput.

A sensitive method based on a geometry-independent neutral desorption (GIND) in combination with extractive electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (EESI-MS) has been developed for fast detection of illicit additives such as sulfonamides and hormones in highly viscous cosmetic products. The method gave a low limit of detection (LOD) (in the range of 0.001-1 ng/g), acceptable relative standard deviation (RSD=6.8-11.4%) and reasonable recovery (87-116%) for direct measuring of nine types of hormones and sulfonamides in the cosmetic products. The average measurement time for two types of samples was less than 1 min. Trace amounts of analytes in commercial cosmetic products have been quantitatively detected, without any sample pretreatment. The experimental results showed that non-volatile illicit additives such as sulfonamides and hormones could be sensitively liberated using the GIND device for quantitative detection from the highly viscous cosmetic products, demonstrating that GIND-EESI-MS is a promising tool for high throughput, sensitive and quantitative analysis of highly complex viscous samples.

Five chemotypes, the isoborneol-type, camphora-type, cineole-type, linalool-type and borneol-type of Cinnamomum camphora (L.) Presl have been identified at the molecular level based on the multivariate analysis of mass spectral fingerprints recorded from a total of 750 raw leaf samples (i.e., 150 leaves equally collected for each chemotype) using desorption atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (DAPCI-MS). Both volatile and semi-volatile metabolites of the fresh leaves of C. camphora were simultaneously detected by DAPCI-MS without any sample pretreatment, reducing the analysis time from half a day using conventional methods (e.g., GC-MS) down to 30 s. The pattern recognition results obtained using principal component analysis (PCA) was cross-checked by cluster analysis (CA), showing that the difference visualized by the DAPCI-MS spectral fingerprints was validated with 100% accuracy. The study demonstrates that DAPCI-MS meets the challenging requirements for accurate differentiation of all the five chemotypes of C. camphora leaves, motivating more advanced application of DAPCI-MS in plant science and forestry studies.